Slow Homecoming (11 page)
When he had finished working, Sorger, as he often did, stayed a while doing nothing. The door to the corridor was open, and a dog ran past. Sorger called him, but the animal didn't even raise his head. Then, announced by the jangling of keys, came the campus policeman. He, too, ignored the man in the lab.
There was a typewriter on the table outside; a blank sheet of paper was in it. The sun shone through the paper, and it fluttered slightly; beside the typewriter lay an orange. Suddenly the sun had become an evening sun; orange and paper turned reddish. A stiff eucalyptus leaf clung for a moment to the back of the chair, then fell to the ground. A croaking was heard from the animal shed. Down below, crests of foam passed along the stone wall bordering the bay, not single waves, but a great
flock, driven by the wind (or by a small earthquake far away) into the arm of the sea. The surface of the water remained smooth as far as the eye could see, but Sorger saw it at a slant, and thus tilted, it plunged headlong into the bay. Then the air in the foreground clouded and the fog descended in thicker and thicker layers on the crowns of the trees.
flock, driven by the wind (or by a small earthquake far away) into the arm of the sea. The surface of the water remained smooth as far as the eye could see, but Sorger saw it at a slant, and thus tilted, it plunged headlong into the bay. Then the air in the foreground clouded and the fog descended in thicker and thicker layers on the crowns of the trees.
The large campus, which Sorger now left, sloped so gently in the direction of the water that the incline was discernible only in the tapering substructure of the buildings. It was a quiet neighborhood, but always seemed lively, even without the purring of the electrical buses and the sound of steps, which seemed to start up all through the day as though coming from all directions, and to die down again; and in the midst of which a male or female cough might be heard as distinctly as nowhere else in the city. The whole campus was covered with fog, not white but hazy, and of uneven density, so that here and there the sun formed almost motionless circles of light in which the grass sparkled and whatever moved through it took on color for a moment. On one of the tables an empty beer can rolled slowly forward and backward in the fall wind that was still pressing down in the fog, keeping time with the sustained but tinnily distorted strokes of the campus clock, which offered an electronic imitation of chimes. Just then a large plane with a gleaming metallic belly flew low and almost soundless over the trees.
A straight road led along the bay from the campus to the city. As far as the eye could see, cars and pedestrians were moving in the last rays of the sun, while already the upper stories of the high-rise buildings above them were bathed in gray mist.
Looking back, one should have seen the crenelated
university tower above the campus, which in the distance looked like a virgin forest; instead, there was only a great cloudy bubble, which had shot up from the ground and congealedâa dome of mist, gleaming metallically in the evening sun and, demarcated at its edges from the magnetic sky blue of the surrounding country, engulfing the whole campus.
university tower above the campus, which in the distance looked like a virgin forest; instead, there was only a great cloudy bubble, which had shot up from the ground and congealedâa dome of mist, gleaming metallically in the evening sun and, demarcated at its edges from the magnetic sky blue of the surrounding country, engulfing the whole campus.
It was already dark when Sorger stopped at the top of the pass (walking had become harder and harder for him, but his memory had not, as usual, returned); the first trembling lights appeared in the distance, and at length the city, which had almost disappeared, widened into a vast glittering ribbon. The fog had not fully dispersed but had become so thin and translucent as to be scarcely visible in the darkness.
Sorger turned to the midtown section, which unlike the residential areas hardly twinkled at all but formed a rigid luminous design, and saw himself floating along the housefronts. The place where he was standing (the “pass”) became as palpable as the ground under his feet, and he sat down on a bench at a bus stop.
In the cars, which were passing in unbroken procession, the drivers were almost always alone; highlighted by the car behind, their silhouettes emerged from the darkness, and after a while the uninterrupted sequence of motionless black busts, passing singly (faceless heads surrounded by wreaths of light), formed a leisurely cavalcade despite the speed at which they were moving and the assortment of engine sounds; as if there were no drivers in the cars, but only silhouettes in identical, evenly lighted frames, unconnected with the seemingly autonomous four wheels that were carrying them through the night.
This otherwise endless, transparent procession was
punctuated here and there by the massive and opaque shuttle buses. Behind their dark-tinted panes, one could only guess at the existence of passengers. Still, an individual or a small group might become visible now and then when the spotlight was turned on above them. Then one would see not silhouettes but clearly delineated human figures, made especially distinct by the surrounding blackness. Most of the passengers thus illumined sat with their heads against the backrest and tilted slightly to one side; seen through the tinted windows, their features were reddish-yellow. These rapidly passing faces were images recalling a forgotten era of peace, an era of “sitting,” “thinking,” “reading,” “resting” figures which provoked a shock of recognition in the eyewitness by suddenly coming very close from far away.
punctuated here and there by the massive and opaque shuttle buses. Behind their dark-tinted panes, one could only guess at the existence of passengers. Still, an individual or a small group might become visible now and then when the spotlight was turned on above them. Then one would see not silhouettes but clearly delineated human figures, made especially distinct by the surrounding blackness. Most of the passengers thus illumined sat with their heads against the backrest and tilted slightly to one side; seen through the tinted windows, their features were reddish-yellow. These rapidly passing faces were images recalling a forgotten era of peace, an era of “sitting,” “thinking,” “reading,” “resting” figures which provoked a shock of recognition in the eyewitness by suddenly coming very close from far away.
Then a brightly lit city bus turned into the stop, and in it Sorger saw the neighbor woman with her children. The children were talking to each other while the woman looked on in silence. He had noticed her because in the bus she had removed her hand from her forehead with almost the same gesture as he on the bench outside. On her face, he thought, there was a “touch of pain,” which (as occurred to him later) he had only sensed in himself. She smiled to herself and took off her scarf as if she were at home, and in the white light her magnificent hair seemed for a moment “a kingdom of its own.” He waved. When the bus started moving, she turned her head, saw him, looked at him from top to toe, but failed to recognize him. He jumped up, tapped on the window; but it was a different window with a different face, which looked back at him in surprise as the bus drove off; and then unseen, under the open night sky, Sorger blushed violently.
At first he was only confused, and in his confusion he
spoke to a woman who had got off the bus and was standing there undecided. Without looking at him, she said “No!”; and when he tried to explain, she (her face still averted) showed him her closed hand (not even a fist) and walked away, sauntered off into the darkness without him, a melody unknown to him in her body.
spoke to a woman who had got off the bus and was standing there undecided. Without looking at him, she said “No!”; and when he tried to explain, she (her face still averted) showed him her closed hand (not even a fist) and walked away, sauntered off into the darkness without him, a melody unknown to him in her body.
Much later, when Sorger was able to remember and understand that decisive moment in his life, it seemed to him that it would have sufficed to “call a halt,” to “slow down” everything (his movements, thoughts, breathing), and then “nothing would have happened.” But in that moment, as he followed the woman for a few steps, his only thought was: But I have money. Then the ground at his feet became as distinct as if he had fallen. Silence as after an accident, a barking of dogs. The fall was sudden; the emptiness quite unexpected. Instead of “No one knows where I am,” it was now: “I no longer have anyone. Everyone else has someone.”
He paced back and forth, incapable of thinking. He had thought himself indestructible. He stood still, sensing that where his projected scientific paper was concerned, he was doomed to failure; perhaps he'd be able to write it, but then no one would hear him. “No chaos!” That was all he could say: then like a rocket of speechlessness he shot out of space, which shrank and was gone.
“Space prohibited!”
The ocean became sinister, unreal, but so did the colony in the pine woods; the whole city was black, but so was every suggestion of nature. “Ye buses, take me away from here.”
He paced back and forth; he stopped; he had forfeited not only his “pass” (for a moment it struck him as no more than a “hole” and then as a joke between the knuckles) but also all the spaces and places of his imagination:
the table under the eucalyptus trees as well as the northern river, which, with the most poignant parting sorrow, he saw vanishing for all time behind an embankment.
the table under the eucalyptus trees as well as the northern river, which, with the most poignant parting sorrow, he saw vanishing for all time behind an embankment.
The plan of his life was destroyed: there was no longer a “field”; nowhere; gone was even the possibility of orientation by the stratification of the ground under his feet. Along with the Beautiful Water, he too was drying out; he burst; his skin was pulled off; and from under the earth “the living corpse” rose up into him.
Sorger paced back and forth, conscious of having seen through himself. Hitherto his moments of self-knowledge had shaken him alive, but now, with the loss of “his” places and spaces, which had meant a secure future, he saw himself as a bungling cheat: “Your places and spaces don't exist. It's all up with you.”
Who said that? What was this voice that had held him down ever since he had consciousness? For a moment he heard a buzzing inside him, as though he were his own Evil One; and saw a shapeless carcass: his soul, which, if this unceasing voice of condemnation were to be believed, was due to be separated from his body; an afterimage of the cat which he had once taken with him on an airplane and which in its terror had put on a death's-head.
A few years earlier, just after his arrival on the West Coast, Sorger had experienced an earthquake. Sitting on the edge of a swimming pool, he suddenly saw the water slant. The air was full of dust, a strange light prevailed, great mountains seemed to be moving. He felt the tremor, in fact he toppled over, but he couldn't believe it. And now, likewise, he felt that his end was near but at the same time impossible: “Me” die? How beautiful were the
smell of food from the houses, the evening light, even the sound of someone spitting in the darkness.
smell of food from the houses, the evening light, even the sound of someone spitting in the darkness.
Then, luckily, when the supreme judge went into greater detail, his voice brought up more and more refutable not to say preposterous accusations (finding fault with Sorger's name, reproaching him for not having helped to build the houses in the region, and in the end even accusing him of “failing to offer resistance” in the days of government by violenceâSorger had hardly been born at the time).
Walking back and forth, back and forth, he had gradually lulled himself to the point of saying nothing but numbers.
Then a car stopped alongside him and his neighbor's voice rang out in their common language: “Hey, neighbor.” In the next moment, as Sorger got into the happy heap, he thought: “Be thanked, ye powers.” He had been waiting so intensely for something that he saw the car as “revelation,” and his own skull as a “dome of expectancy.” Certain that he would not have found his way home by himself, he put his hand in the crook of the man's elbow. To whom had a man ever been so palpable? “Divine fellow man.”
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Sorger followed his neighbor to his house. He stood for a long while in the hall, as though that were a special place. As he stepped into the living room, the experience of the “threshold”: he was back in the game of the world again.
He even said several times to the wife and children: “It's me.” To sit at the table with them; to lift the children up (they let him); to look at the food (ineffable radiance of meat); just to be sitting under a roof. That
evening Sorger basked in the joy of certainty. This was the home of a family who unassumingly lived a possible life; and he himself was part of this house where the objects were beautiful and the people innocent.
evening Sorger basked in the joy of certainty. This was the home of a family who unassumingly lived a possible life; and he himself was part of this house where the objects were beautiful and the people innocent.
It was an evening of compliments. He said to the couple: “I cherish you”; and with the same air of almost momentous gravity (to the husband): “In Europe, I shall miss the sight of your striped cotton shirts”; while (to the wife) he praised “the natural polygonal pattern in the crust of your white bread.” And he recognized himself in his politeness; that evening it fostered the idea of a “country” embodied by the polite Sorger; indeed, his name suggested the province that the bearer (and countless homonyms) hailed from; and he ended up speaking his almost forgotten dialect so naturally that no one saw anything amiss.
That evening he cast off all the stiffness of the usually rather formal guest; he propped his elbows on the table, plucked his hosts by the sleeve, and studied their faces with candid familiarity. Unable to be alone for a single moment, he followed his hosts all over the houseâthe husband to the cellar, the children to their room, the wife to the kitchen. The beauty of the threshold! He poured the drinks, he put the children to bed; they told him their most private secrets, things unknown to their parents. Later, while talking, he paced the living-room floor, as if he were the master of the house. “You're so far away,” he'd say to his hosts, and ask them to move closer. Provided he took (sole) responsibility for every sentence he addressed to themâkeeping his compulsive logorrhea under controlâit would help him to make his peace with the human world. With every word that Sorger (with difficulty) uttered that evening (Shape your words slowly, he thought), he gained admittance to this
house, to its peopleâto its “country” (Only if I create the form, shall I be with these people), and he who had lost his large spaces immersed himself studiously in the smallest ones.
house, to its peopleâto its “country” (Only if I create the form, shall I be with these people), and he who had lost his large spaces immersed himself studiously in the smallest ones.
In the house, the night was bright; there was a full moon. The children were playing in their room. In the clear light of that evening, where everything settled down in a new stratum of space, the “melancholy gambler” (this formula, he felt sure, was the key to his existence, and not only to this moment of it) saw the face of the woman across from him as he had never before seen any face.
He startedâthough not for the first timeâby noticing her hair; he delighted in its sheer abundance, in her curls, in the line of her part. Little by little the details of her face opened up to him: their beauty was beyond question, but now they became dramatic: one feature guided his eye (he had no desire to be anything more than an eye) to the next. This is happening for my benefit, he thought. But he was not staring at the woman; his gaze, rather, put the finishing touch to his politeness, for in perceiving her he became invisible, converted into a mere human presence. Again he saw himself transformed into a “receiver,” as when he had observed the polygonal pattern in the mud of the riverbank. But here, instead of concentrating his powers, he managed, in reconstituting the woman's face, to expend every last one of the energies he found there, until at length the ability to assimilate another person (hitherto dependent on sympathy and confined to particular individuals) became in itself an all-embracing new energy: at present he had no other, but that sufficed.
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